Page:The English Peasant.djvu/372

 that is great and noble and holy, there is a certain tone of self-satisfaction, as if he would say to Jesus and those around, See how great a sacrifice I am about to make!

But the Saviour condemned him not. He knew that his faith, alloyed as it was with years of ignoble thinking and acting, was, and that was enough.

But my purpose here is not to defend William Huntington, either as a man or a Christian, but to present him as an English agricultural labourer, struggling to develop what was in him without any help from his country—shut out, in fact, by his poverty from any share in the wealth of culture and experience England inherits from the past. We have no right to sit in judgment on such men, for they owe us nothing. We make England even appear to them the hardest of stepmothers, instead of the loving mother they have a right to expect. But England, tied and bound, robbed and enchained, is in need of their help. Some day her sons will not think everything gained, because the strong individual is free to tyrannise over the weak, and will begin to think it time that the country—that is, England herself—should be free. That will be a happy day.